New Open-Access Book Explores Mid-20th-Century Experimental Scores

In the mid-20th century, visionary individuals across visual art, music, poetry, theater, and dance began to employ experimental scores, revolutionizing artistic practice and fostering new forms of interdisciplinary collaboration.

These radical methods, linked to movements such as the neo-avant-garde, neo-Dadaism, intermedia, Fluxus, and postmodernism, gained significant prominence during the 1960s. From New York to Europe, East Asia, and Latin America, these experimental approaches became foundational to global trends in contemporary art and performance.

The Scores Project: Experimental Notation in Music, Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975 (Getty Research Institute, FREE) is a groundbreaking digital publication offering an in-depth exploration of the mid-20th-century’s experimental scores. Featuring the work of renowned artists such as John Cage, George Brecht, Sylvano Bussotti, Morton Feldman, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Jackson Mac Low, Benjamin Patterson, Yvonne Rainer, Mieko Shiomi, David Tudor, and La Monte Young, The Scores Project also includes a complete digital edition of a rare pre-publication proof of An Anthology of Chance Operations (1962–63). Ambitious, provocative, and playful, this publication is an invaluable resource for scholars and students seeking to understand this historically complex and innovative moment in art history.